May 21, 2013

Flickr Users Get One Terabyte Storage From Yahoo!

The ink hardly had time to dry on Yahoo!´s acquisition of Tumblr when CEO Marrisa Mayer took the stage in New York to announce a brand new Flickr redesign, complete with larger images and an entire terabyte of cloud storage offered to every user.

This generous amount of storage (1,024 gigabytes to be exact) offers every user something only those pro users once had access to. Pro users who renew their subscriptions will be given unlimited stores of data as well as an ad-free experience while on the site. Yahoo! has even placed a slider on their homepage for users to determine just how many pictures they´ll be able to store with one terabyte, depending on the photo´s resolution.

For instance, users could store 218,453 high-resolution, 16-megapixel photos for free with Flickr´s new offerings. Some creative hackers are a little too tempted by the thought of a free one terabyte cloud storage locker and have even devised ways to store movies and music on Yahoo!´s open servers.

Mayer appropriately posted a version of this announcement on the Yahoo! Tumblr page last night, saying that collecting photos is simply part of the human experience.

“When it comes to photography, technology and its limits shouldn´t hinder the experience,” she wrote.

“Flickr´s stunning new desktop design puts photos at the heart of the experience. Built around a new photostream that gives you a vivid and endlessly scrolling gallery, it´s easy to see what your friends are posting and what they´re saying about your photos. And because Flickr has always been about exploring photographs from users around the world, we´ve also created a new slideshow that displays the most spectacular Flickr photos in gorgeous full-screen,” Mayer added.

These changes are all an effort to “make Flickr awesome again,” a point Mayer made during today´s New York Press conference. The new layout has a sort of Facebook feel to it with large images placed front and center and a smaller, profile picture on the side of the screen. Mayer also says sharing these photos will be easier than ever as users will be able to download full-resolution versions of these pictures and share them with any social network.

Yahoo! also released a new Android version of the Flickr app which largely catches up to the iPhone version of the app released in December. Photos viewed or downloaded onto these phones and tablets will maintain their original quality, preserving the image and the moment captured therein.

“We hope you´ll agree that we have made huge strides to make Flickr awesome again, and we want to know what you think and how to further improve!” said Mayer in closing.

According to PC World, however, a small group of hackers are ready to take advantage of Mayer´s kindness by writing some code to allow more than just photos to be stored in their free, one terabyte of storage.

Two Github projects have been uploaded to the site which encode other file formats – such as MP3s or PDFs – into a PNG image file. This way Yahoo! only sees a photo image and allows the file to be stored. While this technique is technically possible, it´s yet to be seen how reliably files can be stored using this method. Yahoo! could also get wise to this activity and find a way to shut it down.

Under Mayer, Yahoo! has been steadily making headlines with new apps, improvements on existing services, and acquisitions. While the Silicon Valley company is producing some quality work, it´s yet to be seen if these actions will boost customer numbers. After being given one terabyte of free storage, however, it´s hard not to root for them.